Thursday, September 06, 2007

Writer's (cell) block

I'm never quite sure where story ideas come from for me - sometimes they're triggered by a news story, or something I see, or something someone says .. but there's at least one Polish writer today who will be serving some cell time because of his "best seller". He has been jailed over the murder of a businessman, four years after writing a novel detailing a similar earlier crime which occurred a couple of years earlier. Yes, yes, it's all been done before ... but in this case, the book contained details about the crime which were apparently known to only the killer and the police. Krystian Bala insisted the detail in "Amok" about the brutal murder of a Polish businessman were taken from press reports of the crime or made up. Of course, the fact that the real-life murder victim was Bala's ex-wife's lover might have skewed people's thinking. However, because of a lack of evidence, Bala was not convicted for the murder - but received the 8 to 25 years prison sentence for his involvement/directing the killing - which means that the statement "known to only the killer and the police" is slightly misleading and really needs to be extended in this instance to include "and perhaps the person who instructed and continues to protect the identity of the killer". But it does give pause for thought for writers, doesn't it?

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